menomena

Above is not only the back and front cover of Menomena‘s fourth full-length record Mines, but are slightly different stereographic photos, visible as a three-dimensional single image if you cross your eyes just right. I’ve tried it a couple times. Fun, but my eyes hurt.

The band are offering another track off the record called “Five Little Rooms” on their homepage, in exchange for your e-mail. Mines is outJuly 27th on Barsuk Records (and in Europe July 26th on City Slang).

Sidenote: Using these Topspin widgets is a way to give fans free music, in exchange for adding the fans e-mail to a band database for future mailings. Here’s the problem. If there is nowhere where you can actually stream/hear said free song (like myspace or the widget itself), how can anyone ever know that the track is good enough to outweigh being added to another e-mail database. I’m a fan of the widgets that allow you to at least stream the song before you decide on downloading it and are more likely to embed that kind of content on my site. Just saying.

Portland, OR’s Menomena are back with their fourth full-length record called ‘Mines’, out July 27th on Barsuk (July 26th on City Slang). Additionally, the three-piece have teamed with The Helio Sequence for a limited-edition 7″ in celebration of Record Store Day 2010, featuring the Mines b-side ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ and Helo Sequence’s ‘Converter’.

Not only just a hiking destination in Oregon, Romana Falls is Brent Knopf’s (of Menomena) first solo venture. The album (titled Intuit) he has put together features guest appearances by 35 friends (including members of The Helio Sequence, Mirah, Loch Lomond, 31 Knots, Talkdemonic, Nice Nice, Tracker, Dat’r, Dear Reader, 3 Leg Torso, and Matt Sheehy) and will be released by Barsuk on Aug. 18th.

I haven’t got any tracks here, but I can push you towards his myspace page to hear Salt Sack and Meletric.

Possibly my least productive day bandwise. I saw only 8 of them….. And I still can’t remember what I was doing between noon and 2pm. Everything else has come back to me.

SXSW has always been about meeting people. I met Sue while on the plane from Denver to Austin last monday. We talked for most of the flight, finding striking similarities between me and my twin brother and her two sons (twins as well), both of which were working in the music industry in Austin. As well, one is currently managing the infamous Daniel Johnston. *You might need to go rent this if you’ve never heard of him. Through High Wire Music and the help of a killer street team (nice work kids), they put together a solid showcase in town that day. I saw Daniel play. Great show, the crowd agreed.

Jumping backward, I’d like to mention seeing Loney, Dear perform at the team Clermont party. It was a perfect show for that part in the day. I found a good spot right by a circular fan. The room was dead quiet. I couldn’t help thinking about a folkier version of the Bee-Gees in his sound. Really nice songs, you can find a hell of a lot of them here, check out I Am John.
After dinner a bunch of us jumped around quite a bit. Saw Montreal’s Besnard Lakes at the Mohawk and Lo Fi Fnk from the alley way behind The Beauty Bar Patio. Really liked Cloud Cult‘s performance at Emo JR’s featuring two live painters on stage.

Champion had people dancing like crazy making me wonder if the patio at Maggie Mae’s could support the jumping. Datarock were a nice surprise as well.

Menomena was a highlight as well, but I’m going to hold off on writing about them just yet. Tomorrow night I’m off to see them, Field Music and Land Of Talk at the El Mo. Great lineup.